This project will develop a simulation model, which is covering both the socio-economic as well as the environmental system in a comprehensive, quantitative and disaggregated way. The model will integrate a very detailed coverage of all European countries (including Eastern Europe) as well as the links between Europe and all other world regions.
Specific expected results of MOSUS:
• The project will deliver a comprehensive and consistent database on environmental inputs to European economies as well as to all other economically important countries/regions in the global economy.
• By attributing environmental inputs to final demand categories, disaggregated by countries and sectors, the project will quantify the physical basis of European economies, including the indirect flows arising from national and international linkages of production and trade.
• Analysis of the economic driving forces on material flows and land use in the economies considered in the simulation model, thus clarifying and quantifying the interrelations in the “socio-economic driving forces-pressures-environmental impact” chain.
• The project will quantify the relation of resource use indicators to socio-economic aggregates such as GDP and employment, i.e. indicators for resource productivity and labour intensity of resource use as well as its relation to important emission indicators.
• Best policy measures will be validated, which will stimulate innovative technologies and management practises towards higher resource productivity, which is a precondition for reconciling competitive economic development and continuing economic growth on the one hand and environmental protection requirements on the other hand.
• The model will deliver country specific policy suggestions in particular for Eastern Europe and indicate development paths, which avoid the type and scale of environmental problems, which today are faced in many countries of Western Europe.
